Our social system doesn’t indicate that you should care what they think of you based on your mode of dress. It says you should care based on offering all people a certain level of respect until they prove otherwise.

It’s a very fuzzy line. Some people use the excuse that they don’t care what others think to not bathe or use mouthwash. I think you and I would both agree that other people shouldn’t be inflicted with our stink unless they prove otherwise.

Some people take 3 hours just to get ready to go by some bread and milk at the corner store.

I’m somewhere in between. I try and be clean. I don’t think people need to suffer the sight of me in a speedo. Generally, unless I have a reason not to, I give people the benefit of the doubt and try to dress somewhat better than I might if just lazing about the house.

As for your hermit like tendencies … yeah, they have become more pronounced of late. I don’t care for people either but I do enjoy the sensory stimulation of new sights, sounds and places. I get bored stuck inside more than a day or two … even with the computer 😉

You do enjoy the new and different, or seem to, once you are doing it. But you also seem to get enough sensory stimulation from the stuff in your house that you don’t have any force pushing you to take that first step out the door.

For the most part, that is part of the spectrum of human response from focused / stay at home to scattered / sensation seeker. I’m not quite as focused, not quite as much a stay at home as you. Billie on the other hand is one of those people that gets bored after 1/2 an hour without something to amuse her.

The only thing to remember is that, hard as it is at times, it does us all good to step a little outside of our comfort level from time to time. It does people like you and me good to get out once in a while, it does people like Billie good to have to sit and amuse themselves for a day once in a while. I think we humans run the risk of, comfortably, stagnating if we aren’t careful.